Saudis complain of U.S. coverage

Douglas JehlNew York Times News Service

Venting new frustration at how Saudi Arabia is being portrayed in the West, two of the kingdom's top officials have publicly assailed what they called unfair and biased news coverage, with the defense minister citing a "slanderous campaign" sparked by "Zionist and Jewish" pressure.

In remarks published in newspapers here Thursday, the defense minister, Prince Sultan, and his son, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who is ambassador to Washington, spoke in unusually harsh terms in denouncing articles and editorials that have suggested that the nation has been complicit in terrorism.

Bandar criticized many of those reports, including the ones that have portrayed Saudi Arabia as teaching hatred of non-Muslims in its schools and paying protection money to supporters of Osama bin Laden, an exiled Saudi dissident.

"The truth of the matter is, we think he's evil, bin Laden," Bandar was quoted as saying late Tuesday in an interview broadcast on CNBC. "We think people who follow him are evil. We have pain for what happened in America. We are condemning what happened. You guys are refusing to accept us."

Sultan was quoted as saying he was surprised by the American media coverage, saying that Saudi newspapers "did not match evil with evil by responding to the slanderous campaign in the West," according to the official government Saudi Press Agency.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday night in the Saudi city of Tabuk, he said Saudi Arabia is not against the United States or the West and does not support terrorism, but "we have our Arab and Islamic policy, which we would not divert from in any way whatsoever."

The involvement of 15 Saudi hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. has focused much critical attention on the kingdom, and senior Saudi officials have complained repeatedly that many accounts were inaccurate.

In a lengthy press release last week, the Saudi Embassy in Washington tried a rebuttal, noting for example that President Bush had declared as early as Sept. 24 that "the Saudi Arabians have been nothing but cooperative."

In trying to smooth over any disagreements, officials from both countries have found it convenient to blame the press, but in Saudi Arabia that blame has been particularly pointed at what most Saudis interpret to be a Jewish lobby that controls the American media. Sultan's comments can be seen as a faithful reflection of a much broader swath of Saudi sentiment.

"The media blitz against the kingdom is not in the interest of the United States," Sultan was quoted as saying. "U.S.-Saudi ties are based on huge mutual interests."

Sultan ranks third in the Saudi hierarchy, and his remarks seemed particularly significant because he generally is thought to be among the Saudi leaders with the closest ties to the U.S. He blamed what he called "the campaign by some American and Western newspapers" on the kingdom's support for the Palestinians, as voiced in an unusually sharp message that Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's day-to-day leader, sent to Bush in August over American support for Israel.

"You leave us no alternative except to pursue policies based on our national interest, regardless of their impact on you," Bandar told Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, in delivering the message, according to an official familiar with the chain of events.

In the comments that were reported Thursday, Sultan was said to have described as "rational" Bush's initial reply to that warning, dispatched in a letter to Abdullah.

But the defense minister suggested that more recent moves by the Bush administration to back the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon had been influenced by Zionist pressure.